The day after: An apocalyptic morning

by Jessy Cruise

  " Christine?" Jack's voice yelled from back at his position.

  "I got him, Jase!" she yelled back, her breath raggedly moving in and out of her lungs, terrified sweat running down her face with the rainwater. "Move down to where I'm at. I'll cover you from here."

  As she waited for her brother to come down to her she began to tremble with fear overload. Her hands, which had been steady as a rock during the battle, began to shake, making it difficult to keep the barrel of her rifle steady. She closed her eyes for just a second and commanded herself to be calm. This wasn't over yet. There still might be others out there.

  There wasn't. Jack came down and she signaled him to find a position opposite of her. He did so and, after a furious exchange of signals, they moved in, advancing to the rise behind where the gunmen had emerged, searching with their eyes the downhill portion of the forest there. They saw no signs of anyone else, nor did they receive any jigs on their nerve endings.

  "I think those were the only two," Christine said when they finally stood together behind the trees. "If nothing else, we're secure up here."

  "Jesus, sis," Jack said, trembling himself now. "What the hell happened? Where did they come from?"

  "They must've just been two people that were heading for the bridge when they stumbled onto me." She told him the story, her voice breaking a few times as it came out. "It's a good thing I finished my business before he came out," she concluded, feeling the giddiness that she remembered from her last firefight now. "If he would've came before, I'd be cleaning it out of my panties about now."

  The thundering roar of water rushing through the canyon had masked all sounds of the battle from Skip, Paul, and Jessica, who were standing just in front of the SUVs on the Garden Hill side of the bridge. All they knew was that it was first light, the agreed upon time for the two kids to show themselves, and they hadn't done so yet. Skip, starting to become seriously worried now, kept waving his hands every few minutes towards the hill, giving them the pre-arranged signal. They were supposed to stand briefly and acknowledge the wave and then move down the hill towards the road.

  "I'll give them ten more minutes," he said to Paul, "and then I'm going over there to look for them. Something's wrong."

  "Hmmph," Jessica said from around a large wad of gum she was chewing. "It wouldn't surprise me if something happened to them. I still can't believe you left a couple of children out there alone all night. And with guns. That's criminal behavior if you ask me."

  Skip glared at her, giving her such a seething look that she took a step away from him, her mouth stopping in mid-chew. "They're not children," he said to her. "They're more capable out there than anyone I've seen in this town so far."

  She said nothing, just glared back at him.

  "Maybe they're having trouble getting up the hill," Paul suggested, trying, unsuccessfully, to break the tension a little. "You said they have full packs to lug, not to mention your pack and your weapon as well."

  "It shouldn't have taken this long," Skip said, reaching his hand beneath the black rain slicker he had been provided and itching at his chest. He had discovered that his body was so used to wearing wet clothing that it did not know what to think of dry clothing. The material of the shirt, jeans, and underwear he had been given felt rough to his skin, almost like sandpaper. A strange irony.

  The minutes ticked by slowly, agonizingly, and finally, just before Skip was about to begin heading for the far side on his own, he spotted movement atop the hill. "There," he said, pointing, his voice full of relief. "Do you see it?"

  All three of them peered intently upward until they saw two people, so dirty that they would not have been visible had they not been silhouetting themselves deliberately. They both waved their hands back and forth for a moment. Skip waved frantically back, giving them a "come down" gesture. They stopped waving and began to scramble downward, towards the road.

  "They're not going to fall, are they?" Jessica asked. "Shouldn't they go around the hill to the other side?"

  "They're a lot safer coming down that way," Skip said, keeping his eyes on their progress. "God only knows how many lowlifes you have camped out in the forest over there."

  "But if they fall..." she started.

  "You weren't very concerned about them last night," Skip said. "You were perfectly willing to leave them out there to the wolves. Why are you so worried about them now?"

  "I did not say I was unconcerned for them last night," she barked at him. "I just told you that we couldn't afford to feed outsiders. I still feel that way. I'm just shocked that you allow children to carry guns and camp out in the woods by themselves. And that you encourage them to climb over wet hills where they could fall and hurt themselves."

  Skip opened his mouth to retort, and God knows what might have come out of it, but Paul, keeping with his role as mediator, stepped in between them. "That's enough, you two," he said, holding up his hands in a gesture of supplication. "Really. It looks like the two of them are coming down just fine. There's no need for anyone to worry."

  Skip let his mouth close. Jessica, after a moment's consideration, did the same. Silence ruled during the rest of the descent.

  As soon as Christine and Jack put their feet on the roadway and started walking towards the bridge, Skip began trotting towards them. By the time they reached the first set of barricade vehicles that guarded the entrance, he was running and so were they, Skip's backpack held between them. Jessica and Paul stayed back, neither willing to venture any further out of town then they already were (this was, in fact, Jessica's first trip to the bridge since the impact itself).

  "Skip!" Christine yelled, dropping her half of his backpack to the pavement and rushing into his arms. She hit him nearly hard enough to knock him over, her clothing leaving a dirty smear of mud on his rain slicker. He didn't care. He put his arms around her and hugged her tightly to him, kissing her muddy face.

  Jack came up right behind her - after carefully setting the pack and Skip's rifle down - and joined the embrace, not caring if people thought he was a fag for hugging a guy. He could not remember ever being so glad to see someone in his life. Skip let one arm come off of Christine and put it around his shoulders.

  "You're safe," Christine said, her voice choked. "You made it in!"

  "Fuckin aye I did," he said, continuing to hug both of them.

  "Are they gonna let us stay here?" Jack asked, fighting back tears of his own.

  "We're working on it," he told them. "We'll know by the end of the day, but it's looking good."

  "Did you shake 'em up like you said you would?" Jack asked.

  "Even more," he said, pulling back from the embrace. "Even more."

  "My God," Christine said, looking at him closely for the first time. "You don't even look like you. You're clean!"

  "And you shaved," Jack put in. "I never saw you without the beard before."

  "You like it?" he asked, running his wet hand over his reddened, itchy face. "This is what I used to look like before."

  "It's different," Christine said, reaching out to touch the bare skin.

  "What took you guys so long?" he asked.

  Their expressions darkened. "We ran into some trouble this morning," Christine said.

  "What?"

  They explained what had happened, Christine doing most of the narration but Jack throwing in a few comments from time to time. As they talked, the happiness they had shown at seeing him again turned to fear and despair at what they had been through.

  "When I got over along that log," she said, trembling a little at the memory, "I saw him just sitting there, cowering. He still had the gun in his hand but he looked so scared, Skip. He looked terrified! I shot him anyway, four or five times, until he fell down."

  "That's exactly what you should have done, Christine," Skip told her, sensing that she was feeling guilty for killing someone who hadn't actually been shooting at her at that moment. "You did everything just right. Perfectly. Both of you did."

&nbs
p; "But what if I would've just told him to leave?" she asked. "I mean, he looked like he just wanted to get away from there. I could've yelled over to him..."

  "You gave him that chance once, didn't you?" Skip asked, lifting her chin to make her look him in the eyes. Tears were running down her face, mixing with the rainwater. "He didn't take you up on it, and in fact, he fired at you again after you'd made the offer, didn't he?"

  "Yes, but..."

  "No buts," Skip said firmly. "You have nothing to feel guilty about. That man took his chances and he lost. I would've been pissed off at you if you'd done anything but smoke his ass once you got him in your sights."

  "Yeah, sis," Jack replied. "You smoked his ass! Fuck him."

  "It sounds like you two performed a picture-perfect flanking maneuver. It's like I've told you all along, you're bad-ass."

  "I suppose," Christine said, still sniffing a little, still unable to get the final moments out of her head.

  "Come on," Skip said, going over to his pack and picking it up. "Let's get into town. It's about a twenty-minute walk during the day but they have hot baths and warm food and fresh clothes there. You guys deserve all of that."

  "Hot baths?" Christine said. "Are you making that up?"

  "Nope."

  "Wow," she said, giving another sniff. "I didn't think I'd ever get to have a bath again."

  "I don't usually like baths," Jack said, "but I think I can make an exception."

  They began walking across the bridge, heading towards Paul and Jessica, who were still standing on the other side, watching the reunion.

  "Look how filthy those children are," Jessica told Paul as they approached close enough for them to see. "It'll be a wonder if they don't have some sort of... disease or something."

  Paul looked at her in annoyance. "Jess," he said, "it's not like they have bathing or laundry facilities out there. They've been living in the wild for nearly two weeks now. What did you expect them to look like?"

  "Children just should not be exposed to this sort of thing," she said, giving an extra hard chomp on her gum. "It's criminal if you ask me. That man is a menace!"

  "Christ," Paul muttered, shaking his head in wonder. Just what world did Jessica live in? It certainly was not the same one that he did.

  Skip made the introductions once they were close enough to talk to each other. "Jessica, Paul, these are Jack and Christine, the baddest-ass fighting team that I have ever had the privilege of serving with. Jack and Christine, this is Paul and Jessica, two of the leaders of Garden Hill. They are going to discuss with the other members of the town today whether or not we will be staying with them."

  The kids muttered some brief but polite "nice to meet you's" to their hosts.

  "Skip has told me what you two have been through," Paul said, shaking each of their hands. "Let me be the first to tell you that you sound like a couple of troopers."

  " Christine dear," Jessica said, looking at her, making no move to shake either hand. "Are you crying?"

  "I'm okay," Christine said, giving a very teenager-like shrug. "We've just had kind of a rough morning."

  "I can imagine," Jessica said. "Being left all alone out there all night long."

  "They had a little encounter with a few men this morning," Skip said. "That was why they were late for the meeting on the hill."

  "Men?" Jessica said.

  Skip let Christine tell the story, thinking it might be therapeutic for her. In a way it was. By the time she was done with the second narration, her tears had dried up and her voice was a little more like itself. Jessica however, did not seem to be terribly impressed with what she was hearing.

  "That all sounds rather fantastic," she said, making no attempt to hide her skepticism.

  "Fantastic?" Jack said, anger showing on his face. "What is that supposed to mean?"

  "Yes," Christine said, giving a rather evil glare of her own. "What is that supposed to mean? Are you trying to say I made that up?"

  "Well you must admit," Jessica said, "that it seems highly coincidental that such a thing would happen right before we start considering whether to take you in. And the fact that two children could come out the better in a gun battle with two grown men, well that is very difficult to swallow."

  Skip took an angry step toward her. "I don't give a shit who you are, lady," he said. "You will not call Christine and Jack liars. Not while I'm around. How dare you belittle what they have just been through!"

  Jessica, alarmed by Skip's tone and his advance towards her, then made a mistake. She let her hand drop down to the butt of the gun on her waist. Before her fingers could even close around it, before Paul or Skip could intervene, there was the simultaneous clanking of two rifles swinging towards her as Jack and Christine instinctively moved to protect their leader.

  Jessica squealed as she found herself facing two automatic weapons and took another step backward. Her feet tangled together, overbalancing her. She fell to her butt on a puddle of standing water, sending up a little spray.

  "Holy shit," Paul said, keeping his own hand well clear of his weapon.

  "Stand down," Skip barked at them. "It's okay. She was just posturing."

  Slowly they lowered their rifles. "She was gonna pull a gun on you Skip," Jack said. "Didn't you see it?"

  "Don't worry about it," he told them. "Everything's cool."

  "They pointed guns at me!" Jessica yelled, still sitting in the water. "At me!"

  "And you were about the point a gun at Skip," Paul said, extending a hand to help her up. "It's okay. Nobody got hurt."

  "What if they would've shot me?" Jessica, seemingly near hysterics, asked. "I can't believe these children are carrying loaded guns and that think they can just go pointing them at people who have invited them into their town!"

  "Skip," Christine said, fighting back tears again, "I don't need a bath this bad. Let's get out of here. How can we stay in a town with someone like that?"

  "Shhh, Christine," he said, glaring at Jessica. "It's okay. They're not all like her."

  "Get those guns away from them," Jessica yelled at Paul. "Why aren't you doing something about this?"

  "Shut up," Paul said to her.

  "What did you say to me?"

  "I said shut up," he repeated. "Everything that's happened here, you brought on yourself. First you call them liars right to their faces after they relate a traumatic experience they went through this morning and then you try to draw a gun on their leader."

  "Did you hear the way he talked to me?" she asked.

  "He talked to you just like you deserved, Jess," Paul said. "And I will not take those guns away from those kids. It is quite obvious they know how to use them properly. I don't think they'd give them to me anyway. Now, can we start heading back to town or would you like to stand out here in the rain and piss off a few more people first?"

  "You're forgetting your place," she said, pointing an angry finger at him.

  "And that line is getting old fast," he replied. "Now, let's move out, shall we? We have a lot to do today."

  "I won't stand for this, Paul. You're mocking my authority."

  "That's only because you're abusing it. Now let's go."

  She muttered a few more things under her breath but said nothing else aloud. She turned and began heading across the bridge, her feet splashing through the puddles.

  About six miles to the southwest of the bridge, on the wilderness side of the canyon, the two hunters that Skip, Christine, and Jack had encountered two days before were on their last legs. They had long since consumed the two cans of turkey chili they had been given and the brief surge of energy that meager offering had provided was long since used up. In desperation they had tried eating a few of the dead squirrels that they had found lying around, cutting them up and peeling the stringy, foul smelling meat from the bones. Since they had no means of making a fire in the relentless rainstorm they tried to choke the horrible tasting chunks down raw, but neither had been able to force it past the back
of their throat without triggering uncontrollable vomiting.

  They had staggered on, making increasingly worse progress as the hours ticked by, lugging their hunting rifles with them more out of instinct than anything else. Both had started to think that maybe those rifles would be used pretty soon to simply end it all. One quick pull of the trigger while the barrel was placed in the mouth would instantly quiet the painful rumbling in their stomachs, instantly end the black fatigue that pulled at them incessantly. Neither had suggested this aloud as of yet but both knew the suggestion was coming. Both also knew it would more than likely be agreed upon once it was brought up. Maybe they could shoot each other at the same time? If suicide really were a mortal sin, wouldn't the simultaneous mercy killing of each other be a loophole around that particular prohibition?

  "Let's rest a minute, Jack, " Rod, the older of the two said wearily. They were just about to start up another rise. It was only a shallow one, no more than fifty feet up at a gentle angle, but to Rod it looked nearly as formidable an obstacle as Everest.

  "Yeah," Jack agreed, breathing hard. "A rest will be good." He slumped to the ground, not caring that he'd landed right in the middle of a patch of poison oak.

  They did not talk, they did not look at each other, they did not really even think as they sat there, their bodies drawing on whatever non-essential tissue it could find to burn for energy and propel them forward. Their mouths hung open listlessly, their sunken eyes staring at nothing. They did not even hear the cracking of branches or the squishing of boots through mud as three men crested the top of the hill above them.

  All three carried assault rifles and wore camouflage clothing from head to foot. They had sidearms on their hips, heavy packs upon their backs, and military helmets upon their heads. The first man to spot the two hunters below them gave a hand signal that Skip would have been familiar with. He had taught the same signal to Christine and Jack. The two men to the rear halted in place for a moment and then spread out to the sides, their rifles pointed downward, beads drawn on the two men. The men to the rear then passed more signals to a larger group behind them. This group of thirty, who were all armed and equipped as the front three, spread out to the flanks and found cover.